RealTheAbsurdist said:Not necessarily. Attack on Titan is a shounen, but it's really serious and dark, in a way that we associate traditional seinen anime with. To my knowledge, Non Non Biyori is a cute girls doing cute things anime, and it's listed as a seinen. Aside from that one Naruto run, what was shounen about this anime? I think the AOT & Non Non Biyori examples make my point more than anything, which was that being dark or having graphic things don't make something seinen. Conversely, having cute girls doing cute things don't make something not seinen. I agree both fit the labels they've got.
As to what makes something Seinen or Shounen, there is a laundry list things, be it common tropes, general character archetypes, themes, plot layouts, settings, etc. As to what those tropes, settings and such are, they get more specific or discarded as certain genres (romance, historical, etc) overlap or diverge. An actual example would be stuff like the power of friendship, hard work bringing rewards, etc, being shounen, typically with genres such as action. Shounen, Seinen and the like are very unique in that sense, they're far more abstract and complex genres than something like romance or action, and I definitely get why people don't wanna call them genres or think they're not, but you cannot deny that shounen (or shounjo or seinen or josei) in particular amass a lot of certain tropes, art styles (shoujo in particular on this one), content, story layouts, etc, especially when they intersect with other genres like action, romance, etc.
IMO, everything about Thorfinn screams shounen, be it his attitude, his goals, his fighting, etc. But, that said, IMO, Vinland Saga shouldn't be listed as either, but if it were one of the two, it's closer to shounen, but as I said, it used graphic things (rape, murder) to disqualify itself from that label and appear like a seinen. I just really think that seinen label is a stretch, and that it has more shounen elements (Thorfinn, Canute, the manner in which the fights are portrayed, etc) than it has seinen (Askeladd) elements. I think it's a lot more like series like AOT, or Arslan Senki than say Elfen Lied, Drifters, Ajin, or Black Lagoon.
Ottes said:
What I was trying to say is that seinen and shounen go way more than just battle manga like a lot of JUMP series and Seinen can go way down like ''insert stupid harem manga number #678''. And with all of that annoyes me people using arguments like ''Ugh, this series is so childish, bad written , if it was Seinen it would be better!'' and in fact the series in question is a Seinen manga published in a SEINEN magazine. This whole demographic thing is just way too messy to me and in the same way that you disagree about this whole stuff being just demographic, I find annonying people constantly using them as a point to dismiss a lot of series.
(This discussion will go nowhere anyway but I decided to still reply since you didn't offend me directly in any reply and that's a rare thing in these forums lol) And in my original comment to which you replied, I said or implied precisely none of that. Nor did I disagree with any of the first two sentences. In fact, that is exactly what I believe and what I've been saying. I just said I don't think this is seinen, and that it uses things like rape, murder, etc to appear like it is, and that such things, while not appropriate for younger audiences / shounen, doesn't automatically make them appeal to older audiences / fit into the opposite genre (seinen). I didn't say it would be better if it was what I consider seinen, I didn't say it wasn't seinen only because of the battle aspects (though I do think that the overblown fighting, RE: Tree throwing Thorkell & Flying Thors, are unfitting and shounen-esque), etc.
Yes, and if you'll recall to those Beastars threads, I discussed exactly that and how I think half the reason certain things get the seinen label is because of where they are published, instead of their content. To relay an analogy, if Berserk was published in a shoujo manga, it would not be a shoujo. I'm not dismissing anything? I'm just saying I don't think this is really "seinen".
Well if that's the case, cheers. And I agree, I doubt it will. I think the more we talk, the further we get apart; we are not on the same page. |